<h1 align="left"></h1>Old but very enlightening speech by a senior statesman of the commonwealth!<h1 align="left"><font face="Arial" size="4">Dr Mahathir Mohamad PM of
Malaysia's Speech in Full to the OIC</h1>
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Thursday October 16, 2003
Dr Mahathir opens 10th OIC Summit

Dr Mahathir addresses the 10th Summit of the OIC in Putrajaya. - Starpix
Speech by Prime Minister Datuk Seri Dr Mahathir Mohamad at the opening
of the 10th Session of the Islamic Summit
Conference on Oct 16, 2003

ALHAMDULILLAH, All Praise be to Allah, by whose Grace and Blessings we,
the leaders of the Organisation of the Islamic
Conference (OIC) countries are gathered here today to confer and
hopefully to plot a course for the future of Islam and
the Muslim ummah worldwide.

On behalf of the Government and the people of many races and religions
of Malaysia, may I extend a warm welcome to all
and everyone to this 10th Session of the Islamic Summit Conference in
Putrajaya, Malaysia’s administrative capital.

It is indeed a great honour for Malaysia to host this Session and to
assume the chairmanship of the OIC. I thank the
members for their confidence in Malaysia’s chairmanship.

May I also take this opportunity to pay a special tribute to the State
of Qatar, in particular His Highness Shaikh Hamad
Bin Khalifa AI-Thani, the Emir of the State of Qatar, for his
outstanding stewardship of our organisation over the past
three years.

As host, Malaysia is gratified at the high level of participation from
member countries. This clearly demonstrates our
continued and abiding faith in, and commitment to our organisation and
our collective wish and determination to
strengthen our role for the dignity and benefit of the ummah.

I would also like to welcome the leaders and representatives of the many
countries who wish to become observers at this
meeting because of their substantial Muslim population. Whether they are
Muslims or not, their presence at this meeting
will help towards greater understanding of Islam and the Muslims, thus
helping to disprove the perception of Islam as a
religion of backwardness and terror.

The whole world is looking at us. Certainly 1.3 billion Muslims,
one-sixth of the world’s population are placing their
hopes in us, in this meeting, even though they may be cynical about our
will and capacity to even decide to restore the
honour of Islam and the Muslims, much less to free their brothers and
sisters from the oppression and humiliation from
which they suffer today.

I will not enumerate the instances of our humiliation and oppression,
nor will I once again condemn our detractors and
oppressors. It would be an exercise in futility because they are not
going to change their attitudes just because we
condemn them. If we are to recover our dignity and that of Islam, our
religion, it is we who must decide, it is we who
must act.

To begin with, the governments of all the Muslim countries can close
ranks and have a common stand if not on all issues,
at least on some major ones, such as on Palestine. We are all Muslims.
We are all oppressed. We are all being
humiliated. But we who have been raised by Allah above our fellow
Muslims to rule our countries have never really tried
to act in concert in order to exhibit at our level the brotherhood and
unity that Islam enjoins upon us.

But not only are our governments divided, the Muslim ummah is also
divided, and divided again and again. Over the last
1,400 years the interpreters of Islam, the learned ones, the ulamas have
interpreted and reinterpreted the single
Islamic religion brought by Prophet Muhammad S.A.W, so differently that
now we have a thousand religions which are often
so much at odds with one another that we often fight and kill each
other.

From being a single ummah we have allowed ourselves to be divided into
numerous sects, mazhabs and tarikats, each more
concerned with claiming to be the true Islam than our oneness as the
Islamic ummah. We fail to notice that our
detractors and enemies do not care whether we are true Muslims or not.
To them we are all Muslims, followers of a
religion and a Prophet whom they declare promotes terrorism, and we are
all their sworn enemies. They will attack and
kill us, invade our lands, bring down our governments whether we are
Sunnis or Syiahs, Alawait or Druse or whatever. And
we aid and abet them by attacking and weakening each other, and
sometimes by doing their bidding, acting as their
proxies to attack fellow Muslims. We try to bring down our governments
through violence, succeeding to weaken and
impoverish our countries.

We ignore entirely and we continue to ignore the Islamic injunction to
unite and to be brothers to each other, we the
governments of the Islamic countries and the ummah.

But this is not all that we ignore about the teachings of Islam. We are
enjoined to Read, Iqraq, i.e. to acquire
knowledge. The early Muslims took this to mean translating and studying
the works of the Greeks and other scholars
before Islam. And these Muslim scholars added to the body of knowledge
through their own studies.

The early Muslims produced great mathematicians and scientists,
scholars, physicians and astronomers etc. and they
excelled in all the fields of knowledge of their times, besides studying
and practising their own religion of Islam. As
a result the Muslims were able to develop and extract wealth from their
lands and through their world trade, able to
strengthen their defences, protect their people and give them the
Islamic way of life, Addin, as prescribed by Islam. At
the time the Europeans of the Middle Ages were still superstitious and
backward, the enlightened Muslims had already
built a great Muslim civilisation, respected and powerful, more than
able to compete with the rest of the world and able
to protect the ummah from foreign aggression. The Europeans had to kneel
at the feet of Muslim scholars in order to
access their own scholastic heritage.

The Muslims were lead by great leaders like Abdul Rahman III, AI-Mansur,
Salah El Din AI Ayubi and others who took to
the battlefields at the head of their forces to protect Muslim land and
the ummah.

But halfway through the building of the great Islamic civilisation came
new interpreters of Islam who taught that
acquisition of knowledge by Muslims meant only the study of Islamic
theology. The study of science, medicine etc. was
discouraged.

Intellectually the Muslims began to regress. With intellectual
regression the great Muslim civilisation began to falter
and wither. But for the emergence of the Ottoman warriors, Muslim
civilisation would have disappeared with the fall of
Granada in 1492.

The early successes of the Ottomans were not accompanied by an
intellectual renaissance. Instead they became more and
more preoccupied with minor issues such as whether tight trousers and
peak caps were Islamic, whether printing machines
should be allowed or electricity used to light mosques. The Industrial
Revolution was totally missed by the Muslims. And
the regression continued until the British and French instigated
rebellion against Turkish rule brought about the
downfall of the Ottomans, the last Muslim world power and replaced it
with European colonies and not independent states
as promised. It was only after World War II that these colonies became
independent.

Apart from the new nation-states we also accepted the western democratic
system. This also divided us because of the
political parties and groups that we form, some of which claim Islam for
themselves, reject the Islam of other parties
and refuse to accept the results of the practice of democracy if they
fail to gain power for themselves. They resort to
violence, thus destabilising and weakening Muslim countries.

With all these developments over the centuries the ummah and the Muslim
civilisation became so weak that at one time
there was not a single Muslim country which was not colonised or
hegemonised by the Europeans. But regaining
independence did not help to strengthen the Muslims. Their states were
weak and badly administered, constantly in a
state of turmoil. The Europeans could do what they liked with Muslim
territories. It is not surprising that they should
excise Muslim land to create the state of Israel to solve their Jewish
problem. Divided, the Muslims could do nothing
effective to stop the Balfour and Zionist transgression.

Some would have us believe that, despite all these, our life is better
than that of our detractors. Some believe that
poverty is Islamic, sufferings and being oppressed are Islamic. This
world is not for us. Ours are the joys of heaven in
the afterlife. All that we have to do is to perform certain rituals,
wear certain garments and put up a certain
appearance. Our weakness, our backwardness and our inability to help our
brothers and sisters who are being oppressed
are part of the Will of Allah, the sufferings that we must endure before
enjoying heaven in the hereafter. We must
accept this fate that befalls us. We need not do anything. We can do
nothing against the Will of Allah.

But is it true that it is the Will of Allah and that we can and should
do nothing? Allah has said in Surah Ar-Ra’d verse
11 that He will not change the fate of a community until the community
has tried to change its fate itself.

The early Muslims were as oppressed as we are presently. But after their
sincere and determined efforts to help
themselves in accordance with the teachings of Islam, Allah had helped
them to defeat their enemies and to create a
great and powerful Muslim civilisation. But what effort have we made
especially with the resources that He has endowed
us with.

We are now 1.3 billion strong. We have the biggest oil reserve in the
world. We have great wealth. We are not as
ignorant as the Jahilliah who embraced Islam. We are familiar with the
workings of the world’s economy and finances. We
control 50 out of the 180 countries in the world. Our votes can make or
break international organisations. Yet we seem
more helpless than the small number of Jahilliah converts who accepted
the Prophet as their leader. Why? Is it because
of Allah’s will or is it because we have interpreted our religion
wrongly, or failed to abide by the correct teachings
of our religion, or done the wrong things?

We are enjoined by our religion to prepare for the defence of the ummah.
Unfortunately we stress not defence but the
weapons of the time of the Prophet. Those weapons and horses cannot help
to defend us any more. We need guns and
rockets, bombs and warplanes, tanks and warships for our defence. But
because we discouraged the learning of science and
mathematics etc as giving no merit for the akhirat, today we have no
capacity to produce our own weapons for our defence.
We have to buy our weapons from our detractors and enemies. This is what
comes from the superficial interpretation of
the Quran, stressing not the substance of the Prophet’s sunnah and the
Quran’s injunctions but rather the form, the
manner and the means used in the 1st Century of the Hijrah. And it is
the same with the other teachings of Islam. We are
more concerned with the forms rather than the substance of the words of
Allah and adhering only to the literal
interpretation of the traditions of the Prophet.

We may want to recreate the first century of the Hijrah, the way of life
in those times, in order to practise what we
think to be the true Islamic way of life. But we will not be allowed to
do so. Our detractors and enemies will take
advantage of the resulting backwardness and weakness in order to
dominate us. Islam is not just for the 7th Century A.D.
Islam is for all times. And times have changed. Whether we like it or
not we have to change, not by changing our
religion but by applying its teachings in the context of a world that is
radically different from that of the first
century of the Hijrah. Islam is not wrong but the interpretations by our
scholars, who are not prophets even though they
may be very learned, can be wrong. We have a need to go back to the
fundamental teachings of Islam to find out whether
we are indeed believing in and practising the Islam that the Prophet
preached. It cannot be that we are all practising
the correct and true Islam when our beliefs are so different from one
another.

None of our countries are truly independent. We are under pressure to
conform to our oppressors’ wishes about how we
should behave, how we should govern our lands, how we should think even.

Today if they want to raid our country, kill our people, destroy our
villages and towns, there is nothing substantial
that we can do. Is it Islam which has caused all these? Or is it that we
have failed to do our duty according to our
religion?

Our only reaction is to become more and more angry. Angry people cannot
think properly. And so we find some of our
people reacting irrationally. They launch their own attacks, killing
just about anybody including fellow Muslims to vent
their anger and frustration. Their governments can do nothing to stop
them. The enemy retaliates and puts more pressure
on the governments. And the governments have no choice but to give in,
to accept the directions of the enemy, literally
to give up their independence of action.

With this their people and the ummah become angrier and turn against
their own governments. Every attempt at a peaceful
solution is sabotaged by more indiscriminate attacks calculated to anger
the enemy and prevent any peaceful settlement.
But the attacks solve nothing. The Muslims simply get more oppressed.

There is a feeling of hopelessness among the Muslim countries and their
people. They feel that they can do nothing
right. They believe that things can only get worse. The Muslims will
forever be oppressed and dominated by the Europeans
and the Jews. They will forever be poor, backward and weak. Some
believe, as I have said, this is the Will of Allah,
that the proper state of the Muslims is to be poor and oppressed in this
world.

But is it true that we should do and can do nothing for ourselves? Is it
true that 1.3 billion people can exert no power
to save themselves from the humiliation and oppression inflicted upon
them by a much smaller enemy? Can they only lash
back blindly in anger? Is there no other way than to ask our young
people to blow themselves up and kill people and
invite the massacre of more of our own people?

It cannot be that there is no other way. 1.3 billion Muslims cannot be
defeated by a few million Jews. There must be a
way. And we can only find a way if we stop to think, to assess our
weaknesses and our strength, to plan, to strategise
and then to counter-attack. As Muslims we must seek guidance from the
Al-Quran and the Sunnah of the Prophet. Surely the
23 years’ struggle of the Prophet can provide us with some guidance as
to what we can and should do.

We know he and his early followers were oppressed by the Qhuraish. Did
he launch retaliatory strikes? No. He was
prepared to make strategic retreats. He sent his early followers to a
Christian country and he himself later migrated to
Madinah. There he gathered followers, built up his defence capability
and ensured the security of his people. At
Hudaibiyah he was prepared to accept an unfair treaty, against the
wishes of his companions and followers. During the
peace that followed he consolidated his strength and eventually he was
able to enter Mecca and claim it for Islam. Even
then he did not seek revenge. And the peoples of Mecca accepted Islam
and many became his most powerful supporters,
defending the Muslims against all their enemies.

That briefly is the story of the struggle of the Prophet. We talk so
much about following the sunnah of the Prophet. We
quote the instances and the traditions profusely. But we actually ignore
all of them.

If we use the faculty to think that Allah has given us then we should
know that we are acting irrationally. We fight
without any objective, without any goal other than to hurt the enemy
because they hurt us. Naively we expect them to
surrender. We sacrifice lives unnecessarily, achieving nothing other
than to attract more massive retaliation and
humiliation.

It is surely time that we pause to think. But will this be wasting time?
For well over half a century we have fought
over Palestine. What have we achieved? Nothing. We are worse off than
before. If we had paused to think then we could
have devised a plan, a strategy that can win us final victory. Pausing
and thinking calmly is not a waste of time. We
have a need to make a strategic retreat and to calmly assess our
situation.

We are actually very strong. 1.3 billion people cannot be simply wiped
out. The Europeans killed six million Jews out of
12 million. But today the Jews rule this world by proxy. They get others
to fight and die for them.

We may not be able to do that. We may not be able to unite all the 1.3
billion Muslims. We may not be able to get all
the Muslim Governments to act in concert. But even if we can get a third
of the ummah and a third of the Muslim states
to act together, we can already do something. Remember that the Prophet
did not have many followers when he went to
Madinah. But he united the Ansars and the Muhajirins and eventually he
became strong enough to defend Islam.

Apart from the partial unity that we need, we must take stock of our
assets. I have already mentioned our numbers and
our oil wealth. In today’s world we wield a lot of political, economic
and financial clout, enough to make up for our
weakness in military terms.

We also know that not all non-Muslims are against us. Some are well
disposed towards us. Some even see our enemies as
their enemies. Even among the Jews there are many who do not approve of
what the Israelis are doing.

We must not antagonise everyone. We must win their hearts and minds. We
must win them to our side not by begging for
help from them but by the honourable way that we struggle to help
ourselves. We must not strengthen the enemy by pushing
everyone into their camps through irresponsible and unIslamic acts.
Remember Salah El Din and the way he fought against
the so-called Crusaders, King Richard of England in particular. Remember
the considerateness of the Prophet to the
enemies of Islam. We must do the same. It is winning the struggle that
is important, not angry retaliation, not revenge.

We must build up our strength in every field, not just in armed might.
Our countries must be stable and well
administered, must be economically and financially strong, industrially
competent and technologically advanced. This
will take time, but it can be done and it will be time well spent. We
are enjoined by our religion to be patient.
Innallahamaasabirin. Obviously there is virtue in being patient.

But the defence of the ummah, the counter-attack, need not start only
after we have put our houses in order. Even today
we have sufficient assets to deploy against our detractors. It remains
for us to identify them and to work out how to
make use of them to stop the carnage caused by the enemy. This is
entirely possible if we stop to think, to plan, to
strategise and to take the first few critical steps. Even these few
steps can yield positive results.

We know that the Jahilliah Arabs were given to feuding, to killing each
other simply because they were from different
tribes. The Prophet preached the brotherhood of Islam to them and they
were able to overcome their hatred for each
other, become united and helped towards the establishment of the great
Muslim civilisation. Can we say that what the
Jahilliah (the ignorant) could do we, the modern Muslims cannot do? If
not all at least some of us can do. If not the
renaissance of our great civilisation, at least ensuring the security of
the ummah.

To do the things that are suggested will not even require all of us to
give up our differences with each other. We need
only to call a truce so we can act together in tackling only certain
problems of common interests, the Palestine problem
for example.

In any struggle, in any war, nothing is more important than concerted
and coordinated action. A degree of discipline is
all that is needed. The Prophet lost in Jabal Uhud because his forces
broke rank. We know that, yet we are unwilling to
discipline ourselves and to give up our irregular and uncoordinated
actions. We need to be brave but not foolhardy. We
need to think not just of our reward in the afterlife but also of the
worldly results of our mission.

The Quran tells us that when the enemy sues for peace we must react
positively. True the treaty offered is not
favourable to us. But we can negotiate. The Prophet did, at Hudaibiyah.
And in the end he triumphed.

I am aware that all these ideas will not be popular. Those who are angry
would want to reject it out of hand. They would
even want to silence anyone who makes or supports this line of action.
They would want to send more young men and women
to make the supreme sacrifice. But where will all these lead to?
Certainly not victory. Over the past 50 years of
fighting in Palestine we have not achieved any result. We have in fact
worsened our situation.

The enemy will probably welcome these proposals and we will conclude
that the promoters are working for the enemy. But
think. We are up against a people who think. They survived 2000 years of
pogroms not by hitting back, but by thinking.
They invented and successfully promoted Socialism, Communism, human
rights and democracy so that persecuting them would
appear to be wrong, so they may enjoy equal rights with others. With
these they have now gained control of the most
powerful countries and they, this tiny community, have become a world
power. We cannot fight them through brawn alone.
We must use our brains also.

Of late because of their power and their apparent success they have
become arrogant. And arrogant people, like angry
people will make mistakes, will forget to think.

They are already beginning to make mistakes. And they will make more
mistakes. There may be windows of opportunity for
us now and in the future. We must seize these opportunities.

But to do so we must get our acts right. Rhetoric is good. It helps us
to expose the wrongs perpetrated against us,
perhaps win us some sympathy and support. It may strengthen our spirit,
our will and resolve, to face the enemy.

We can and we should pray to Allah S.W.T. for in the end it is He who
will determine whether we succeed or fail. We need
His blessings and His help in our endeavours,

But it is how we act and what we do which will determine whether He
would help us and give us victory or not. He has
already said so in the Quran. Again Surah Ar-Ra’d verse 11.

As I said at the beginning, the whole world is looking at us, the whole
Muslim ummah is placing their hopes in this
conference of the leaders of Islamic nations. They expect us not just to
vent our frustrations and anger, through words
and gestures, not just to pray for Allah’s blessings. They expect us to
do something, to act. We cannot say we cannot do
anything, we the leaders of the Muslim nations. We cannot say we cannot
unite even when faced with the destruction of
our religion and the ummah.

We know we can. There are many things that we can do. There are many
resources that we have at our disposal. What is
needed is merely the will to do it, As Muslims, we must be grateful for
the guidance of our religion, we must do what
needs to be done, willingly and with determination. Allah has not raised
us, the leaders, above the others so we may
enjoy power for ourselves only. The power we wield is for our people,
for the ummah, for Islam. We must have the will to
make use of this power judiciously, prudently, concertedly. Insyaallah
we will triumph

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